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Monday, September 9, 2013

Reflections

By MichaelPRUTH BAY, BC

This is looking back at Del Viento
over the dinghy transom. Cool, eh?
I took this in the anchorage inside
Reanne's Terror on the west coast
of Baranof Island, Alaska.

At
least a decade ago, somebody described to me a moonless night on a dead calm
sea, far enough offshore that the lights of civilization didn’t eclipse the
brilliance of the stars. The effect was magical, pin points of light reflected
all around so that it appeared to this sailor like their boat was floating in
space.

Lately,
I’m reminded of this daily.

On
the Inside Passage running up the North Pacific coast of British Columbia and
Southeast Alaska, anchorages everywhere provide almost complete protection.
Mornings and evenings are often still, without a hint of a breeze. The result
is that our day-lit landscapes are echoed in mirror-like water. It’s not the
cosmos, but it’s still otherworldly.

--MR

P.S.-- I want to add one more thing to last week's post about That Place. Our new friend and resident of That Place, Brooke Elgie, is a former Good Old Boat writer who now writes a column about That Place for Juneau's Capital City Weekly newspaper. Here is a link to this week's article which concerns the school I talked about in my post. It gives a good general sense of the Place as well.

Okay, this isn't what it appears, I
rotated the photo upside-down, to
show how dramatic it is.

And this is upside-down too, a fishing boat
in Hoonah, Alaska.

Isn't this trippy? I turned this one upside-down too.
(I promise this is the last of this upside-down thing.)
I took this on a lake we came across hiking near
the Glacier Bay National Park Lodge.

How will we ever get used to sleeping in rolly anchorages again?

We anchored on the other side of this tiny,
unnamed island. We went ashore there the
previous day, hiked all the way around it
in about four minutes, named it Robertson
Island, and then harvested about three pounds
of excellent huckleberries off that foliage.

2 comments:

Great photos, Miichael. We, too, experienced the feeling of sailing in space on a moonless night sailing between San Blas and Mazatlan. The illusion was periodically interrupted by the ocassional trails of phosphorescence created by sealife disturbed by our passage. You've captured this magical feeling in your photos.

Thank you for taking the time to comment; we look forward to reading your feedback. Don't forget that you may also contact us directly at delviento@hotmail.com (please type DEL VIENTO in the subject line)

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